Previous post on Clinicenta here: This week the medical newspaper Pulse reports multiple ongoing concerns . I note that one of the major problems is felt to be staff inexperience. Of course, if recruiting on the basis of cost is a factor then this is going to be, too: and when you are in a stand alone clinic, you will not have the usual NHS layers of clinical staff who can be referred to or step in.

I’ve yet to see any evidence, clinical, cost effective or otherwise, that franchising out NHS services is a good idea.

2 Responses to “Private “NHS” provision, continued”

Hi,
I agree completely with your views on privatisation of healthcare.
Wonder wheter you aer interested in an extreme example:
Health care in immigation detention centres is provided in a majority of cases via private contractors and subcontractors (Serco, G4S, GEO, the Practice plc, Primcare, Saxonbrooke, locum agencies). Uniquely among publicly finded clinical services it commissioned and (dys)regulated by the UK Borders Agency,.who have no known competence in healthcare.
The results are dire. Working with the charity, the Medical Justice Network, colleagues and I have advised over 1000 patients in detention centres as independent doctors. What we have seen includes frequent failure of adequate practice
– incompetent history taking and examination
– failure to obtain or believe previous diagnoses and treatments, including denial of insulin and anti-retrovirals
– failure to offer required immunisation and malaria prophylaxis as needed
– externalisation of costs of failure to secondary care and hence PCTs.
These unsatisfactory actions and inactions are thoroughly documented in numerous medico-legal reports and letters written by Medical Justice doctors after interviewing and examining these patients.
Finally, threee Royal Colleges (RCGP, RCPsych, RCPCH) and the Faculty of Community Medicine have stated that the administrative detention of children (c1000 per year at Yarl’s Wood) causes “serious harm” and must cease.forthwith. Thje government have committed to this, but have not actually yet done so. Nor is it clear that alternatives to detention proposed by UK BA will necessarily be a significant improvment on the present deplorable situation.
I hiope you may take a professional (medical and journalistic interes0 in this problem.
With best wishes,
Dr. Frank Arnold